Obscured by Clouds. The rough and ready blog of a cloud benighted biologist and amateur astronomer. Astroblog will cover my interests in astronomy, biology and Life, the Universe and Everything.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Comet C/2012 S1 ISON in Celestia

The view of comet C/2012 S1 ISON and Earth from the Moon as simulated in Celestia on November 13, 2013. Click to embiggen.

I can't believe this, but it seems that I have not previously posted a Celestia
file for comet C/2012 S1 ISON. I remedy this oversight now.

Unfortunately, comet C/2012 S1 ISON has a hyperbolic
orbit, and Celestia doesn't like those. The comet's orbit and name won't
turn up when you turn on the comet attributes, or when you select the
comet by clicking on it. As usual, copy the code below and save as it as
a text file 2012S1.ssc in the Celestia extras folder.
======================2012S1.ssc=============================
"C2012S1:ISON" "Sol"{Class "comet" # Just copying the data for HalleyMesh "halley.cmod"Texture "asteroid.jpg"Radius 5 # best guess at maximum semi-axisMeshCenter [ -0.338 1.303 0.230 ]

Thanks for the data, but when i use this period: 165849.9873 it produces a distance in lightyears from the sun. If i use the given period from Guillermo Abramson, period: 13737660012632014.9 it gives a better result within the 28th november. Regards Marko